


Grey Area

by anderfels



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkward Sexual Situations, Bed Sex, Criminal Past, Drinking & Talking, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Game Spoilers, Grey Jedi, Light Angst, Past Drug Use, Post-Peragus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 17:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5834191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anderfels/pseuds/anderfels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the chaos of Peragus, Atton makes an, albeit half-assed, effort to get to know the Exile on the way to Telos IV. He's trying for calm, to alleviate at least some of the stress of nearly being exploded into a thousand pieces, but as he's quickly learning, nothing with the Exile is ever easy to read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

The Ebon Hawk was a ship made entirely of grey. It stuttered, and there was whirring in the walls with no logical cause, ducts exposed and pipes creaking in the open. Perhaps it had been new once, but the state it was in made that possibility seem like ancient history.

The panelling was grey, as was the flooring – standard quality durasteel mesh, with several holes large enough to trap an errant finger – and the fittings too, grey, like a heat storm, like faces drained of blood.

Still, it was functioning, albeit barely, and Atton reckoned the limp on the starboard side was some sort of intrinsic design fault and nothing he could fix without more credits than the galaxy could ever provide. The chirping in the walls was easy enough to tune into background noise, and the skittering circuits behind the loosest panels could be touched up in time. His pazaak deck was solid in his back pocket, and at least one half of the crew was pretty enough to look at. It wasn’t _wholly_ unpleasant.

The astromech droid beeped past him jovially. He flipped a middle finger and made down the central corridor – grey, dizzying grey. Perhaps they could pick up some new panelling on Telos?

A body sat in the pilot’s seat, blondish head lolling into an outstretched and creaking hand, wrinkled with the angle. The Jedi seemed to exude both anxious restlessness and utter exhaustion all at once, so much that Atton had to wonder how much pinpoint tension one human could take, Force-sensitive or not.

She sagged, like a sack of fenti beans, bent at the waist and crooked in her spine, as though she carried the weight of a whole planet upon her shoulders and couldn’t take another step. Her legs were stretched in front of her, feet resting on the central console - by accident or design, missing any vital buttons - sitting with such a heaviness that it looked like she hadn’t simply sat down in years.

“Hey,” Atton said, and it was so inadequate he almost blushed. _So that was crazy, huh. So we blew up a space station. So we nearly died at least twenty times. So we're off on an adventure and I don't even know your name. Are you alright? I gotta say, you looked better in your skivs-_ No, not that.

She snapped upright so suddenly Atton wondered if she had hurt herself. She pressed her toes together and sat bolt-straight, raking through her hair as though to tear away any evidence of her vulnerability. It was obvious enough, but he didn’t point it out.

Glancing up at him, the Exile twitched her lips in some display of amiability, not at all a smile, and stretched her back, up and arched.

“Hey,” she said. The quietness of it was stifling. Peragus had exploded all around them, desperate fingers on vibroblade hilts and charred cheeks peeking out from behind poorly chosen cover. There hadn’t been a second to breathe, and the stillness of the cockpit was a startling contrast. The Jedi seemed bothered too, her fingers restless on the arms of the chair, muscles in her jaw twitching.

“So,” Atton said, taking the co-pilot seat and draping both legs over one arm. “The past twenty-four hours were… less than peachy.”

“We’re alive,” she said blankly, staring out into the rush of space.

“Well, I mean, yeah, but if there was a scale to rate these kinds of things, the Atton Rand Scale of Jolly Romps About Exploding Republic Mining Facilities, I gotta tell you, ‘We’re Alive’ is probably pretty close to bottom.”

She laughed, loud and unexpected. Atton racked that up as a victory. “It only sounds slightly worse than ‘Less Than Peachy’.”

“I’ll give you that,” Atton said. His smirk slipped and he rolled his shoulders deep into the seat, trying to exude some kind of calm. How did Jedi manage to do that? Close their eyes, say a prayer to a couple of gods, whisper some mumbo-jumbo. It’d be useful to learn, though he doubted Kreia was the teaching sort. And the Exile…wasn’t in the club any more, or so he’d gathered.

“So…” Atton tried again, drumming his fingers lightly on the armrests. “After our _less than peachy_ day, the Sith, the homicidal robots, the several near-death experiences, you holding up okay?”

She didn’t look at him, distracted, her far arm dangling down beside her, as though reaching for something on the floor. Her bicep muscles tensed, and Atton narrowed his eyes.

“What are you doing?”

A golden bottle appeared in her hand, and the Jedi smiled, a small, unpractised thing. She hitched it in her grip and showed him the label, and Atton whistled. Corellian gold whiskey. “I’m doing better since I found this,” she said.

“You are _kidding_!” He could almost smell it, the tang of it. “Where’d you find it?”

She chuckled high in her throat, another victory, and finished unscrewing the lid. “This is a smugglers’ freighter, genius. It’s got more secret compartments than Kreia has cryptic remarks.”

Atton snorted through his nose and laughed, breathless in easy relief. Maybe the calm trick had worked. “It was unlikely you’d stopped at the Peragus Mining Facility liquor cabinet while I wasn’t looking, so I had to ask.”

The Jedi smirked again and wrapped her lips around the neck of the bottle, the tip of her tongue flat between the ridges of glass. She drank, and Atton counted five jolts in her throat.

Shifting upright, he held out one open palm, and she stared at it for a second before releasing the bottle as though it were a prized possession. He drank deep, and coughed most of it into his nose, laughing as it burned the flesh all the way down to his stomach, blissful and familiar.

The Jedi’s eyes laughed at him. “Lightweight.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, pressing the bottle back into her offered hand. “’S’been a while since I had anything that fancy.”

“Right there in the pilot’s hold,” the Exile said, smug.

“Stars bless the two-bit pirate who owned this bucket of bolts.”

Watching the Exile drink, Atton charted another small win, whiskey heat curling in his belly. “How d’you know so much about smuggling ships anyway?”

For a moment, she didn’t look at him, and Atton could almost see the way she weighed her answer, balancing it in each hand, curling her tongue around each word. Finally, she tossed her head back, and her mane of dirty curls flopped over the top of the chair, defeated. Her eyes fell shut for just a second longer than it would take to blink.

“I’ve been out here ten years,” she said. “What do you think I’ve been doing?” The curve of her lips was not shame, or even a true invitation to continue the conversation. It was the expression of a Starfighter pilot, like she was flying, like the weight she carried had fallen ecstatically away. The expression of stars and spires and endless sky. She was remembering, and she was happy.

It faltered a moment later, as the silence seeped into her, and Atton wanted to reach out, to press that smile back into place, dig his thumbs into the dimples of her cheeks and put it back, never let it leave.

But he was a coward, and reached for the bottle instead. “Smuggling?”

“A little bit,” she said, watching his Adam's apple jump as he drank. “Smuggling, spice, juma, hustling sabacc, swoop racing, stims, merc work, dancing, fucking. The Jedi didn’t send me out with pocket change and a number to call in case of trouble, y’know.”

Atton sneered, tightened his fingers around the bottle’s neck. “How bad did it get?”

She licked the corner of her lip. _How bad?_ Her pause was just too fat to go unnoticed, laden with forgotten things, unsaid things. _Bad._

“Sucking off a Trandoshan trafficker on Nar Shaddaa for one peel of a dodgy glitterstim tube.” She made a noise at the back of her throat, like her muscles were remembering how to gag, and Atton whistled, low and stunned. He’d seen folks die on glitter, spin their eyes into their heads and bite until their tongues bled, their hands twitched so hard the bones broke. Eyebrows in his fringe, he gave the Jedi a wan chuckle, and noted absently that not all the marks on her arms were freckles.

She clenched her fingers, relaxed them. “I could see the future,” she said, and laughed, cynical and short, snapping like dry twigs. “He was taking girls. Got hard off kids. It was there in his head, I could see it.”

Atton blinked at her.

“He was grunting, fucking- Needed the glitter. I needed-” Her jaw muscles clenched, and Atton felt the skin of his lower belly prickle in morbid fascination. “I saw it. I had to get out.”

“So I strangled him,” she said, and Atton’s breath cracked. He almost laughed with the absurdity of it, and she granted him another quirk of her lip. There was no shame in the look, but she let out a breath she’d been holding, the fabric of her top wrinkling loose across her stomach as she curled lower in the chair and her hair fell around her shoulders.

Atton was quiet for longer than was like him.

“You’re something else, sister,” he said eventually, passing the bottle back over to her. She needed it more than him, he decided. “Not that I wouldn’t have done the same thing. Maybe not with a Trandoshan.”

The Exile flared her nostrils, the only hint of any disgust she showed.

“But considering your illustrious title, it’s pretty hard to believe.”

She looked at him from beneath her own eyelashes, tipping whiskey lazily past her lips. It was a question.

“ _Hello_?” Atton said. He threw up his hands. “Jedi! High and mighty, green as goblin moss, no fun allowed. _Certainly_ no back-alley glit-biting. And definitely no smuggling, dancing, jaywalking _or_ arson. Ring a bell?”

“I’m not a Jedi,” she said, and turned away from him minutely, but enough to notice. Ah. Sore spot. She had walls thrown too high to see over, and Atton wondered idly how exactly she had managed to survive the past decade. Known space was dangerous enough, but she had been outside charted territory for years. What had she been _doing_? “I quit. Never fit in anyway.”

Atton chuckled, if only to draw her attention back from wherever she had drifted. He stretched, huge and languid, unfurling his legs and sinking low in his chair, the whiskey buzzing pleasantly in his ears, laughed again.

“Nice going, Atton,” he said to himself, tucking his arms behind his head like he was lying on a particularly sunny tropic planet, and not confined to the greyest freighter ever in the ass-end of space. “Out of all the pretty girls in the galaxy, I had to go and land myself with the bad girl rebel not-exactly-a-Jedi Jedi.”

She glanced at him, and her lips twitched again, folding fully around the neck of her bottle and downing another few heavy glugs of whiskey. Her eyes drifted shut, dark smudged lines of kohl beneath her lower lashes, cheeks bronzed with drunken glow, and she looked more at peace than before, and Atton was thankful for all these small victories. “Call me a Jedi again,” she said quietly, “And your balls are ending up like Peragus. On fire. And in thousands of tiny pieces littered all over space.”

This time Atton barked, sniggering his laughter in a sloppy giggle. “It was an accident! That was an accident, okay, we exploded a planet _by accident_. I am not going back to jail. No matter how good you looked with your ti-”

“Don’t test me, Laserbrain.” She was smiling, and Atton laughed again, clumsy, embarrassment creeping pink over his ears. _Way to go_.

“And she’s a comedian. Great. Just my luck.”

The Jedi chuckled, airy and dry, and swallowed two more full glugs of whiskey before handing it over to him. Sighing heavy, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and tiredness seemed to seep over her once more, leaking from her very core. Or perhaps it was just drunkenness. How long had it been since she’d slept?

Atton drank, and watched her fingers tap against the armrest in disjointed rhythm, as though she wasn’t quite aware of them, as though she’d only just regained feeling in her hands, something familiar and yet forgotten.

“So,” he said, and his voice was tellingly low, honeyed with drink. He gestured at her, batting the air lazily. “What happened?”

“Hm?”

“There were plenty of times back there where a lightsaber would’ve been real helpful. So, where’s yours?”

The Exile looked at him for a second longer than comfortable, and Atton threw up a pazaak deck and started shuffling, just in case. He doubted she would, or could for that matter, if she truly had been cut from the Force, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. Didn’t hurt to shuffle the cards.

When she spoke, she was quieter, and the ends of her words had started to slip and slide in the golden haze of the whiskey, minute yet noticeable. “They don’t let exiles keep their lightsabers,” she said, and leant across the distance between them, prying the whiskey bottle from his hand with ungainly fingers.

“Oh yeah?” Atton knew that. “I thought Jedi were supposed to be married to their lightsabers. Or keep them shoved up their asses for safe-keeping.”

Annoyance prickled over her like a thousand thorns, so sharp that Atton even felt it prick against his pazaak hand. He counted the cards in his head, loudly.

The bottle was nearing empty, but the Exile took yet another swig and breathed out thick and burning through her nose. Two breaths. She softened.

“Must’ve heard wrong,” Atton said by way of placation, resting his cheek against his chair. He watched her, gauged her. “Were you a single hilt, or one of those double-bladed ones?”

“Double.”

“Huh.” He reached for the whiskey with a mumbled “gimme that”, and cradled it against his chest. She was staring straight ahead, the dizzying blue of hyperspace reflected in her eyes, her fingers restless on the armrests. Sadness sat in every inch of her, sagging and thick. The allure of it was impossible to bear. He could almost see the psychological walls, and didn’t that just _ask_ him to test their foundations.

“I’ve heard the dual blade is harder to master, but much more deadly.” Where he’d ‘heard’ all these things, she didn’t seem interested enough to ask. Or else, she knew he was lying. “Hey, you didn’t go red, did you?”

She laughed. It was so sudden, Atton started, graceless and off-balance, turning to look at her. There was no humour in her voice, but she smiled at him all the same, misshapen and full of too many teeth, like a hunting animal. He knew the expression. She wet her teeth, and said nothing for a long while.

The view from the cockpit was welcome, amidst the Ebon Hawk’s apparent obsession with grey, as miserable and clinical as the walls of a mortuary. Hyperspace swirled and sang, blue and indigo and turquoise cutting ribbons past the windows, the only sign that they were travelling at all. It would be hours to Telos yet.

T3 beeped, somewhere in the corridor behind them, and Atton didn’t entirely trust his ability to form a coherent insult to fling in its direction, mind melting, mellow in its Corellian haze. It had been too long since he’d got drunk just for the sake of being drunk. He missed it, sinking satisfied into the familiarity, watching the Jedi with his cheek squashed into the chair leather. At least the company was complex enough to interest him.

She was difficult for him to read; a being of pure conflict, of constant tension, frenetic and yet drained of all energy, arrogantly deadly and still the sort of sentiment-burdened moron to stop and try to pet a kath hound. She was a Jedi, which by itself was enough to set his teeth on edge, enough to spike his sense of mistrust. And yet, she had followed Revan into war, just as he had. A Jedi that swore and fucked and gambled, that sat her bare feet on the console of a stolen smugglers’ freighter and swigged whiskey from the bottle. He liked her, and that was a conundrum in itself.

“It was an odd colour.”

Atton blinked, and blue streamed past his eyes. He’d forgotten what they were talking about. “Hm?”

“My lightsaber. Wasn’t quite green, but it wasn’t blue either. Somewhere in between. Teal, almost, like Dawn of Dagobah stones.”

“Must’ve been something.”

“Mhm,” she said. _It was the most beautiful, the most important, the most treasured part of me._

And they took it from her, Atton thought. Bastards.

“Sure would be useful about now,” he said, softer. “It might make the Sith think twice before coming after us, at least.”

That wasn’t true, and they both knew it, but she didn’t argue. A lightsaber would only draw a target on her head in bright, shining neon. They’d rip it from her hands before she could test the grip.

The Exile offered him another half-smile, peeking from the corner of her mouth, her face still, bronze and blue in the space light. “I’ve been without it too long now. Doesn’t matter.”

Atton mimicked her smile. It mattered, he could see that. Like a limb mattered, like her own arm mattered to her. Just what had happened? What had the Jedi done to her?

No wonder she looked like she hadn’t slept in the past century.

“Just because it happened in the past,” Atton said, “Doesn’t mean it don’t hurt though, right? If you don’t dress the wound at the time, it heals wrong, and ten years later you got a whacking great scar and a king-size pain in the exhaust.”

She didn’t answer. Her lower eyelids twitched. When she spoke, her voice was laced with much more venom than Atton had been expecting.

“You’re funny, jailbait.”

He frowned. “I’m being serious!”

“Yeah well I don’t need it.”

Atton snorted, and the Exile’s eyes narrowed fully, feral in a split second. Her knuckles were turning pale with her grip on the pilot’s armrest. “I don’t need it,” she said again, harder.

“What the hell is your problem?” he said, voice slipping louder than he’d intended. “I’m trying to, I don't know, form some kind of bond here-”

“I don’t want your _pity_ , spacer,” she said, spat. “I don’t want your ‘advice’. You don’t know anything about me, so _back off_.”

She was like a dog, cute enough but with teeth enough to take your hand off, and she seemed to hold herself so precariously. At one moment she sank, swelling with the heady satisfaction of just being able to relax, and then the next she cracked, whip quick, like her weight had once again been chained between her shoulder blades and she was expected to march. She teetered over some abyssal fall, and didn’t know if she wanted to just…jump.

Atton couldn’t keep up.

“Hey, well, fine. Forget I said anything!” He threw a hand at her, sneering his most unkind sneer. “You know if you want to pick up a new attitude, we’ll be in Telos in about 20 hours.”

“You’re fracking hilarious,” she said, and stood in one surprisingly sharp movement, with the buzzing tension of the incredibly angry. She flicked a switch on the dash console, so nonchalantly it could have been the self-destruct sequence and no one would have guessed, and wrestled the hem of her tank down over her hips. There was a wobble in her hands, the only sign of how hard she was fighting to keep herself together.

Atton snorted, ugly and unattractive, wrinkling his nose as though she were a particularly foul-smelling animal. “Yeah, well, one of us has to be. Between you and the Queen of the Sith Harpies back there, this ship is about as much fun as a sarlacc pit. About as attractive too.”

The Jedi’s lips curled, yet she said nothing, suddenly starting towards him and sinking four fingernails into the dough of Atton’s hand. He swore. She took the Corellian whiskey. Atton grabbed her, yanked her arm back. Her skin was soft.

“Listen here, _princess_ , I don’t have to be helping you and your suicide mission. I didn’t _ask_ to be here with you and that witch in the cargo hold! And I certainly didn’t ask to be dragged into your bullshit Jedi melodrama!”

“Then frackin’ leave!” She wrenched her arm away from him, fierce enough to throw his balance in the chair, eyes wide. Whiskey jolted from the bottle as she threw her arms out, rounding to face the expanse of space ahead of them and narrowly avoiding hitting Atton in the head. “I didn’t _ask_ you to slime your lying way onto my fucking ship! Go space yourself! And take your pity with you, you asshole-”

“Yeah? Fine! Soon as we hit Telos, I’m out!”

“Good! You can go fuck a bantha for all I care!”

“Oh grow the fuck up-”

“Says the scruffy-looking, no-good, lying, prying criminal scum-”

"Emotionally constipated schutta-"

"Why don't you fuck off out the airlock, you miserable little-"

Atton snarled. “What’s it like being an empty shell of a human, huh Jedi? To be a _nothing_. Cut off from everything that ever made you _alive_. Because it’s working out real well for you.”

The Exile went still.

Atton counted the seconds he had left to live, and welcomed death if it came at her strangling hands. He’d deserve it.

Like a whip crack, she turned, bare feet smacking on the floor as she stalked through the cockpit. She left, dragging her fingers across the Hawk’s panelling for balance, the bottle of whiskey sloshing all the way down the corridor.

At once the air seemed to shatter. Atton snorted all his breath out through his nose, kicking his heel hard against the co-pilot console. “Fucking Jedi.” He kicked again, and pain spiked up his shin bone. Twisting in his seat, he glared down the corridor, tempted to go after her and yell some more. Or apologise. Perhaps both. “And take your piss-whiskey, you…you scow. I don’t fracking care,” he said, loudly. “Keep your freaky Force bullshit. And your winning personality.”

Shifting his weight, he attempted to stand, and sat again immediately. White rushed to his head and blotted out the anger.

The glittering behind his eyes faded with some breaths. How had that happened? The haze, the pleasantly full sensation of being just-right drunk, the amiable prodding, it had been going well. It had been fine, and he’d had to let whatever instinct still lingered in his head take over. Crush them. Break them down.

He’d been trained too well.

It was like the air had gone stale. He tried to stand again, stretching, holding himself on the chair as the world righted itself around him.

Finally, when the throbbing quieted in his temples, he pushed past the spiralling walls – grey, so much damn grey – and stumbled in the direction of the ‘fresher. “Fucking Jedi.”


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Atton had only served to make the situation worse. They both needed a release, an outlet for the tension.

“Atton…”

His eyebrows moved. He shifted his legs, all bones like a sapling, but didn’t wake.

“Atton.”

The Jedi sat, and he rolled slightly into the weight at the edge of his cot. She was a mass of black, the tinny lights of the dormitory panelling painting lines over her shoulders in translucent blue, her freckles like indigo ink blots. Her breathing was earnest, fingers picking absently at a loose stitch on the hem of her top. Nervous.

Atton shook his head, chasing sleep. “Mm…”

“Atton,” she said again, firmer this time, and suddenly Atton’s groin was enveloped in her grasping palm. She pressed against his cock, groping his length into his hip.

He blinked.

Atton pushed upwards as the Jedi leant down, and met her mouth with an airless grunt. It was hurried, sloppy, and Atton craned his neck, grasping painfully into her hair. She arched her spine, crawling over him and sinking into his hips with an obscene wiggle.

“Fuck,” he gasped, and she snatched his breath, palming his underwear still. Blood rushed in his ears. “Fuck, what’re you-”

“Need a good fuck,” she said, voice creaking as though she’d just woken up too. She pulled at his hair, pushing her belly to his. "Want you."

Breath stuck at the back of his throat, Atton shivered, full body, and licked into her mouth by way of answer, his hand anchored against her head. She tasted like whiskey, both her palms going flat on his chest, warm, wanting, but not where he needed them, her fingertips pressing down into the muscles of his stomach. Her hips started to sway, like she was dancing at half speed.

She pulled her tank over her head, unwilling to stop kissing him for more than a second, and Stars knew where it landed, her breasts bare beneath it. Atton clutched at them both with clumsy ferocity, squeezed each just hard enough to pull at the skin, and the Jedi bit his bottom lip and shuddered away from him, though she stayed close enough that he could feel her breath on his skin, heavy, rattling.

“Sorry I yelled at you,” she said, not above a whisper, and was on him again, lips on his jaw, sucking open-mouthed down his neck. He laughed, wrapping one arm around and over her. His fingers slid over the dip of her back, down the curve of her ass, and she lifted her hips just enough to push back at him, to feel the swell of his cock against his thigh.

“No I’m- Fuck.” He groaned, stretching his neck up as she bit at his collarbone, shifted his hips. The Jedi hitched her breath, and her voice wobbled as she groaned, thighs trembling with the push of him under her. “I was completely out of order, I’m sorry- This isn’t-”

She ground a figure-eight and Atton swore, tugging at the fabric of her underwear, digging his fingers down to press at her cunt from behind, push at the depth of her. “Fuck,” he said, gasping, fingers working the ridges just inside her. “I’m sorry, I was-”

The Jedi’s hips jerked, thigh muscles in spasm as she pulled his cock free, shifting her underwear far enough down her thighs that she could press against him and his cock could slide between her labia, hot and slick and clumsy.

He wriggled, dodging her legs to get rid of his own underwear, and the Jedi laughed as she crashed back into kissing him, her breasts pressed tight against his chest. His erection swelled, throbbed, Atton whimpering into her mouth.

“Shit- I mean, we don’t- This isn’t usual.”

Fingers clasped the base of his cock. She stroked, four, five times, thumb too soft against the tip, grasping down to his balls, rolling, coaxing as much as she could get from him.

“Shit,” Atton whispered.

“We can stop, if-”

Atton stared at her. _No, no, please, fuck. Please don’t stop._ “I don’t- I don’t even know your name,” he said, and she kissed him again, like a drowning man fights for air, fierce and hard and dizzying.

Her breath was wet on his mouth, and her thighs were trembling still. She stroked him, deliberately lazy, and pressed the head against her clit, rocking, rolling her thumb until Atton’s hips jerked. His eyelashes fluttered. “Fuck no- Don’t stop,” he said, and it sounded so much less desperate in his mind. “Please don’t stop.”

The Jedi held his cock upright, dripping heat and pressing her way down, guiding him slick and shivering into her.

Her mouth fell open, panting into Atton’s neck. She slid a couple of inches, the tip of his cock throbbing, thighs wide and open and shaking. Atton’s hands went to her back again. He lingered on every blemish, every scar, feeling her hips stutter and jar with the effort, his eyes clenched shut against the tide of feeling, the stretch of her, the heat.

They hovered for a moment, breathing each other in. The Jedi was just decipherable in the gloom, the lines of her, the shadows. He pressed at the small of her back, at the meat of her ass, one hand groping at her right breast, rolling her nipple in his fingers.

When she opened her eyes, they were predatory. She grabbed at his hair and kissed him, deep and hungry, sinking her hips down and forward as she began to move.

Atton groaned into her, pulling at her skin. He bucked upward, jolting her, and his cock slipped out to fuck the cleft of her ass before she repositioned, keening in her throat at the feeling of being full, of being fucked.

He’s content then to let her ride him, and he’d watch her face if he wasn’t so desperate to kiss her, to lick her lips. His hands settled on her hips, urging her faster, because he’s close and _shit_ if that doesn’t make him look like some teenager with a holovid and an eager hand. It was ridiculous, and he could still feel the tug of sleep in his head, the fatigue of barely woken bones and drunken shouting and hatred at her very existence. There was leaping in his belly, hips slapping upward against hers as he rutted up to meet her, faster, harder, her pussy drinking him inward with every sway and slide. He didn’t care whether he hated her. He needed- he _needed_.

She’d lost her grace at some point, when he looked back up at her, her mouth hanging open, hair slick across her forehead. Her breasts bounced with every jerk of her hips, every muscle tight as she fucked herself on Atton’s cock, sucked the skin of his jaw, pawed at his chest.

There was a precipice, and he was so damn close. He grabbed at her hips, overbalancing their weight. She fell against the cot mattress, and Atton hunched immediately over her, swearing against her neck, finding her cunt again and shoving into merciless rhythm. The Jedi screwed her eyes shut, grunting in discomfort and pleasure both, pulling her legs up over his shoulders so she was nearly bent in half, and Atton idly thought what a glorious mess she looked, like a shipwreck, every inch of flesh trembling, hands tearing at the covers as though afraid she might lose her grip on space itself.

Atton came hard and gasping, grinding out a moan into the sweat between her breasts. He fucked her through the high, cock jerking in the heat of her and spurting the last of it onto her belly, thick and years-long, like white scars over her skin. The Jedi swore with the rush, rocking with him through her shuddering, hands in his hair, on his arms, scraping her nails down his shoulders.

Neither of them moved for a long while, Atton sliding between the folds of her cunt and leaking as he laid himself gently across her, letting her legs fall back to the bed. He kissed at her breasts, open mouth and heavy tongue, and she watched, pulling softly at his hair as he caught whatever air he could.

Something witty to say then seemed like the hardest thing to think of.

Atton eventually stopped thinking, and they lay in panting silence. He was drinking in the scent of her, the way her eyelashes were blue in the dim lighting, the way her tan skin was the colour of galaxies. She shifted beneath him, and he let her sit up, raking her hand through her hair. Her thighs still trembled.

She fumbled around the bedsheets, put on her underwear and stood up. Atton frowned, rolling onto his back to watch her.

“Hey-”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“I mean, I just-”

“We both needed it, that’s all,” she said, quiet. “Stress release.”

Atton chose not to be insulted, watching the shape of her change in the dark, the shadows move under her cheekbones. He sat up, burying the covers in his lap. “How many hours ‘til Telos?”

“Sixteen at last check.”

“Frack it,” he said, scratching dumbly at the stubble on his chin. The Exile teased out some of her most erratic curls in the mirror, hanging on one grey-panelled wall, her blonde turned dull blue. She shifted her weight between her feet, clearly uncomfortable, and Atton suddenly gawked. “Shit, you didn’t finish- I’m sorry, let me-”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Colour flushed into his face, and he thanked the gloom for hiding it. He stuffed the covers between his legs, as though it were their fault he had completely forgotten about her while he was fucking into her like some animal, like some pubescent kid. He hadn’t even thought about the fact she was probably still drunk. _I really am an asshole_.

She was still checking herself in the mirror, but she glanced at him, and he knew no one’s hair took that long to sort. Not in near-darkness.

He cleared his throat, plastered on a high voltage smile and his best pick-up voice. “Hey, so, if you ever want to…do that again some time.”

The Exile looked at him. She was faltering again, chaining herself to a new tonne weight, and the effort of it showed in every inch of her, from tapping fingers to bare toes. Her cheeks were flushed and her skin was shining with sweat, but she breathed easily, quiet, and Atton had never felt so completely and utterly inadequate in all his life.

She made to leave. Atton attempted a laugh, at nothing but the _stupid_ silence, and rubbed the back of his neck. He needed to get cleaned up, get back to sleep, find out what time it was. Avoid any insightful thinking. He could process in the morning. With any luck, Kreia hadn’t heard them, or had perhaps died a gratuitously violent death during the night. Either or.

“My name’s Meetra.”

Atton blinked. He stared at her in silhouette, her hand on the door frame.

“Meetra Surik,” she said. And she left.

**Author's Note:**

> oh gosh this is Shameful I can't believe I'm posting it
> 
> Just a note - I didn't know about the book Drew Karpyshyn wrote about Revan + the Exile when I named my character for the first time in KotOR II. I'd read the wiki before playing, and assumed the name was some kind of canon. So um. I don't really want to equate my Exile with that book, but it feels wrong to rename her now. I'm sorry if it bugs you - I know how divisive Karpyshyn's Surik is - but this is not her!
> 
> anywho. thank you for reading! have a great day!


End file.
